ASUFIN: An example for Italy.

ASUFIN: An example for Italy

Italian media choose ASUFIN (Spain) as an example of the triumph of the citizens against banks in the courts.

The recent link between the Italian and the Spanish Association TUCONFIN & ASUFIN, begins to awaken and demonstrate the need for there to achieve a partnership at a European level. This will be developed in more depth the 7th of June in Brussels.

Despite national differences, all affected countries have common parts for they are all have common features for they are actors of the European Union. They can and should serve as an example to one another.

ASUFIN is news again, but this time outside of Spain. It has been the newspaper La Repubblica of Italy who has put the spotlight on the Financial Users Association (Spain). Despite the geographical distance, the medium has given space to the struggle of the spanish association presided by Suarez. To explain the struggle of the Italians, and particularly TUCONFIN, she is chosen as a paradigm of possibility and victory in the courts by ASUFIN.

In the case of the Italian Association, is also fighting against the banks, but such movement is against one in particular: Barclays. The reason this is so concretized, is because this was the only bank in Italy to place in the market the Mutldivisa Mortgages, known in the rest of Europe as FX LOANS. This product was placed mainly to families that do not have abundant resources, to whom a “normal” mortgage were denied. As stated in the article of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, TUCONFIN defends that “tens of thousands of euros are hidden in the loan agreement indexed to euro Swiss franc (CHF), popularly known as Multicurrency Mortgages”. Between 2007 and 2010 Barclays managed to place the product to some 5,500 families, “reducing many of them to poverty”. This article reflects this behavior by banks, that has unfrotunately spread across Europe, also affecting “Greace, Poland, Spain, France…”.

It is precisely in Spain where the article is directed to explain why in Italy, they have the conviction that now there is “a ray of light and hope” in Italy, thanks to what ASUFIN is achieving for the victims of FX LOANS. The association that is presided by Patricia Suarez, managed to win Barclays at the spanish court for having sold FX LOANS.

This partnership is helping serve as a precedent in other countries.

Franca Berno and Sheila Meneghetti, are the Italian activists and funders of TUCONFIN that traveled a few weeks ago to the headquarters of ASUFIN in Madrid. During there stay, and with the Polish association chaired by Tomasz Sadlik, Pro Futuris, associations consumer advocacy agreed to work on: Organizing information seminars in Madrid were each country explained their situation, charted a common plan to help the individual struggle of each country and last but not least, although the laws are different at a national level, fight from a common ground to achieve the creation of a European association. As the president of TUCONFIN, Franca Berno, clarifies “We traveled to Spain to see how they had done it possible”. Now Meneghetti and Berno are responsible for mobilizing the italian citizens and showing how it is possible to win and how necessary it is go to court to end abuses bank.

The fact that TUCONFIN can partner with ASUFIN, seeing how this last one has defeated Barclays several times, as well as other national and commercial banks, shows that it is more necessary than ever to annex and create a common partnership at European level.

Not only is it necessary to fight FX LOANS from a national level, it must also be done from a European one. There are more than a million people affected across Europe and therefore is a problem of the whole community. Italian and Spanish associations and several of the European community, are creating a partnership to defend banking customers. That defense is based, regardless of the country in the eradication of FX LOANS.

That is why the June 7 will be in Brussels with ASUFIN, TUCONFIN and Pro Futuris, with other several specialists in banking abuses that are professionals from different countries and sectors of the European Union. It is at the Belgian capital where the seminars on “Finantial Matters” will be held and which will accommodate a defense of consumer banking at European level. The seminar will be divided into blocks, where Suarez will be responsible for directing the block on Multicurrency Mortgages.